Java Threads and the Concurrency Utilities

CHAPTER 1

Threads and Runnables

Java applications execute via threads, which are independent paths of execution through an application’s code. When multiple threads are executing, each thread’s path can differ from other thread paths. For example, a thread might execute one of a switch statement’s cases, and another thread might execute another of this statement’s cases.

Each Java application has a default main thread that executes the main() method. The application can also create threads to perform time-intensive tasks in the background so that it remains responsive to its users. These threads execute code sequences encapsulated in objects ...